Scoville Units Unite

Friday was a special occassion. The 200th episode of the excellent Boagworld podcast.

To celebrate, rather than record the usual show of about 1hour the hosts organised a 12 hour spectacular pulling together some of the brightest and most interesting people in the web industry. There were experts on coding and design, CSS and CMS, useability and social networking etc. There were also girls. OMG!!!!!

Suffice to say the mouth breathers in the shows chatroom went ballistic. These women couldn’t have been invited on because they were experts in their field, oh no. They were invited on because they were women. The fact they dared to be attractive women, intelligent women, confident women was just too much for them to bear.

IT is a bad enough field as it is for being male dominated. From university to workplaces the vast majority of people involved are male. If you want to question if this is self-perpetuating or not you only have to have seen some of the reports of comments being made by these people.

Two of the women involved in the show Sarah Parmenter and Rachel Andrew have written brilliant pieces laying into these Neanderthals which I would highly recommend reading.

Take small comfort from the thought that this morning most of those who disgraced themselves will be waking up and falling asleep alone, with only Warcraft to take their frustrations out onto.

For the second time in a week I can’t log in to Games For Windows Live.

I can log into the Live mail account associated with it and am online doing other things.

What am I trying to do? Play Dawn of War 2 Campaign.

That, is a single player game which requires two online services to run – Steam and Games For Windows.

I will repeat – I want to play a single player version of a game and can’t as 1 of the 2 online services required to do so is bust.

This is a fundamentally flawed design from a gamers perspective. I am sure Microsoft love that they have you DRM’d up the wazzo and that you can’t re-sell the game. What they fail to remember is that gamers don’t care about the publishers perspective on these issues.

Your system is broken.

In parliament today a bill on euthanasia for those with terminal illnesses was punted to a sub-committee. This is probably what you would expect in a parliament.

What was strange was it had been expected to be handed to the Health committee. According to party hacks euthanasia doesn’t fall under the remit of health.

The more you know.

There is of course another side to the story according to Scotlands new online newspaper Caledonian Mercury

The practice of setting up committees where an issue doesn’t fall under the remit of an existing committee has a logic to it. The chair of these committees rotates amongst the parties.

The SNP were due to convene the next one.

The SNP were also due to produce their Independence Referendum and have it heard by such committee.

The opposition parties took a serious issue which has caused serious discussion on politics throughout the country and fucked about with it purely to score political points against the SNP.

Those who voted to do so should hang their heads in shame, but like we saw recently in Westminster very few elected representatives are capable of doing so, never mind when they have been caught doing something most people would be pretty annoyed about.

Lindsay Mathers has launched a blog (and soon to come site) with some of her horsey paintings.

Looking forward to seeing more images up soon.

It seems the supreme magic user in Europe has opened his mouth and channelled the spirit of a bigot from an earlier time. Given the organisation he is in it could be anywhere from the 1st century to last week.

Daily mash as usual are pretty on the ball with the satire.

He apparently will be touring the country later in the year condemning homosexuals and anything else that pops from his arse to his mouth.

You know there was a book about some guy written a couple of thousands years ago and one of the thing this guy says in it is a pretty good quote to take on board.

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

So here’s an idea for Mr Ratzinger.

When you stop your organisation covering up the systematic molestation of thousands of children over the course of decades (that we know of) then you can stick your nose into other peoples sex life.

Until then shut the fuck up or you taking part in ritualistic cannibalism and pretending to hear voices is fair game for everyone else to rip the piss out of.

And in the meantime, sign the petition to try to stop UK taxpayers footing the bill for the head of a foreign state to tour the country spreading hateful propaganda against minorities.

Well, I can only assume as much given the 13 cops and command unit sitting in a layby on the Kingsway…

This fortnights edition of Private Eye is quite good.

The two stand-outs for me though were the ingenuously fuelled letter about classical music with the quote the capital is positively stiff with magnificent organs.

The second is the large column with outrage that a comedian has been dumped from a festival, the comedian in question being Paul Merton, he who co-stars with Eye editor Ian Hislop on Have I Got News For You. This got as much disclosure as they look for when the Sun gives 5 star ratings to Fox films though which made me chuckle.

I was sure I had previously written about it here but apparantly not.

Before Christmas there was a stooshy in the Courier due to Dundee holding a Winters Light Festival which included turning on the Christmas tree lights among other things as part of the Homecoming Celebration.

Rants and raves from the religious and righteous about political correctness gone mad etc etc. Missing the point that people were taking part in the event who would have no interest in turning on some lights along.

Some were proclaiming that as Christians were a majority no-one should do anything in the slightest to offend any Christians etc etc (never mind the usual Revs who write in saying gay people are hell bound sinners and so on).

I wrote in asking these Church organisations to reveal their church attendance to determine whether they really were a majority or not. Should that be established then and only then could you discuss minority/majority rights/responsibilities with knowledge of the facts.

Answer came there none.

We do have a comparison though. The Church of England has released some figures.

Their average attendance in England is 1.145 million per week. This was a figure from 2008, I could only find the population figure from 2001 (49,138,831), but this will have probably risen so this will be an over-estimate in their favour. This puts attenders at 2.33% of the population of England.

Is this the figure for Scotland or Dundee – no, is it likely to be similar – no reason why it won’t be the same ballpark. Until the figures are revealed it’s as good an estimate as any.

So the next time you hear or read some Christians ranting about how they should have special rights over everyone else or how their spokespersons should have a seat on every debate or indeed that they are a majority in society – remember that figure.

2.33%

An SEO company previously discussed here with a dubious reputation has sent in the lawyers against someone who posted about them.

Apparently them phoning up people claiming to be from Google and people reporting this is grounds to send in legal threats.

In the actual thread a number of people posted their experience with the company (the post was third in Google when you searched for the company). These included people claiming to be former and current customers and former staff.

A boss then waded in claiming that their staff did no such thing. His rambling run on sentences were something to behold. Then a number of testimonials appeared from satisfied customers with a very similar writing style. He then posted again claiming people writing bad things about his company were all working for his competitors.

Sitting in the pub last night one of the 24 hour News programs was on giving us breaking news such as roads frozen and temperature below freezing. How this was breaking news baffled me. Then after the news finished there was the weather.

The newspaper headline section was hilarious with their shocking headlines and attacks on Brown. Given the Daily Mails usual line I was shocked that Frozen Britain wasn’t Browns Frozen Britain.

I’m no fan of the pillock but the tabloid attacks can be pretty pathetic sometimes.

It never happened under Blair was a jokey comment followed by Just call me Dave will sort it out. You could just picture a Dave sermon on waste

Under the former Labour Government, Labour councils were riddled with waste. For example: grit. They whinged and whinged they didn’t have enough of it, then when he splurged more on them it dissapeared immediately. None could be found it the depot, they were just chucking it away. As soon as it was gone they demanded more. Outrageous. Millions couldn’t make it to work, schools were closed, it was more damaging than a day of strike!! Our Conservative government stopped this by not shipping grit to councils who would waste it and moving everyone into workhouses so they wouldn’t have an excuse for being late. As for kids, education is a ridiculous expense they can sweep chimneys in my manor from the age of eight.

You get the idea.

With Tory or Labour cuts coming you could see a repeat of this only getting worse. If you are a council in the South East and get a wee sprinkling of snow every other year and an inch or so every 30 years it’s a short term gain to cut spending on grit supplies. In the next 4 years that’s a low chance of needing them. Look at all that waste you have saved, inefficiency solved. Never mind that to get it when you need it as your streets are locked up means the price is gouged and days of work have been lost for thousands of people including council employees. It’s the same short term policy planning that leads to quarterly bonuses for bankers etc.

I was reminded of this watching a video on Daily Mash of David Mitchell ranting about waste. He points out it’s like taking over a bar and saying you will eliminate waste by banning spillages and being really really careful. And just as likely to work. Unfortunately I can’t find the clip.

Maybe the councillors should find out more about the delays in getting salt and grit to their doors when it’s needed. They all seem in favour of a junket at our expense, in Dundee these have included trips to the middle east and trips to strip bars. Maybe a fact finding mission to the salt mines of Siberia is in order. Of course we should only look at the short term cost so buying a return ticket is out. Once there they can make a plan for the short term by trying to then get a single to return.